The Upper Tribunal has given guidance on when lawyers are expected to identify suspected fraud on the part of their clients. The case is the joined judicial review applications in R (on the application of MD Bilal Ahmed & Ors) v Entry Clearance Officer [2026] UKUT 273 (IAC). It was formally reported by the Upper Tribunal’s reporting committee this week but was actually handed down and published on the tribunal’s website some time ago.
There were five cases joined together here and a firm called ZYBA Law was acting in all of these. The tribunal records that there were two solicitors at ZYBA Law: Mr Hussain, the practitioner responsible for the firm, and Mr Tauhid.
The tribunal revealed that there were at least 25 judicial review cases sharing common features in total and some of the evidence in the case suggested an even wider pattern.
Background
A series of applicants for visit visas used identical or very similar documents to support their applications. They then sought to challenge refusal of their applications by way of applications for judicial review, there being no right of appeal against refusal of a visit visa.
By chance, judges had noticed similarities between some of the cases. Cover letters and professed motivations for visiting the UK were notably similar, all had recently received repayment of loans to friends and family, several relied on statements of their assets and liabilities prepared by the same company, all relied on character references featuring near identical phrases and several had submitted land valuation documents purporting to originate from different companies but bearing identical mastheads.
Many of the cases had links to a company called Vision Sylhet Consultancy. After reviewing the evidence in some detail, the tribunal concluded that ‘it is more likely than not that the applicants have relied upon fraudulent or dishonest documents, most likely provided to them by Vision Sylhet Consultancy.’
Duty of candour
Should the solicitors in these cases have noticed something was amiss and, if so, were they under any obligation to do anything about it? To reason this through, the tribunal begins with the duty of candour.
It is well established that the duty of candour applies to both parties in an application for judicial review. This includes ‘candid disclosure of all relevant material and facts that are reasonably required by the Tribunal for it to arrive at an accurate decision’.
For the avoidance of doubt, material which is unhelpful to the disclosing party must still be disclosed. And if the facts are not self evident from the documentary evidence, a witness statement will be necessary.
So, if there is material adverse to a client’s case of which a lawyer is aware, the material must be disclosed. In this case, the solicitors asserted they have no obligation to investigate or join any dots and therefore the duty had not been breached.
The general rule is indeed that lawyers are not expected to investigate the truth of their clients’ statements or evidence. Famously, we lawyers follow our instructions. Further, the rule of legal professional privilege protects documents and evidence from disclosure.
There are exceptions to both these rules, though.
Detecting client fraud
The tribunal found in these cases that there was a prima facie case of fraud. The tribunal goes on to conclude that:
where there are “red flags” that bear the “the hallmarks of fraud”, the solicitor cannot continue to act for their client without first making enquiries to satisfy themselves that they are not being instructed to help further the fraudulent conduct. To continue to act would be in breach of their professional obligations.
I’m going to quote the next passage in full, as the tribunal sets out some specific examples:
Indicia of fraud would in our view encompass circumstances where a solicitor is, or should be, aware that several clients of the same nationality who have made applications for entry under the same immigration rule are relying on identical or substantially similar documents, and there is no obvious innocent explanation for this that means further enquiries are not needed. If there is no obvious innocent explanation, then in our view this should raise a red flag that the solicitor’s services may be being used in furtherance of a serious fraud. Whether it is reasonable to expect a solicitor to have noticed the indicia of fraud will depend on factors including the number of solicitors working for the firm and the time period over which the clients were taken on. For example, if a firm employs many solicitors and the clients are taken on infrequently over a long period, it may be unreasonable to expect a solicitor to pick up on any similarities in the documents. Conversely, where the firm is small and the clients were taken on over a short period of time or regularly over an extended period, it would more likely be reasonable to expect the solicitor to pick up on red flags.
The firm was small and the clients were taken on over a short period of time in this case.
Legal professional privilege
After reviewing the authorities, the tribunal concluded that legal professional privilege ‘does not arise in relation to a fraud, crime or other iniquity, including underhand conduct which is in breach of a duty of good faith or contrary to public policy or the interests of justice.’ Specifically, legal privilege ‘does not arise where there is a prima facie case of fraud.
The lawyers were therefore not prevented by legal professional privilege from complying with their duty of candour and bringing the prima facie fraud to the attention of the Home Office or the tribunal. The tribunal goes further and holds that, once notified of the fraud they had apparently failed to detect themselves, the lawyers could not simply walk away:
where information is brought to a solicitor’s attention, either by the Tribunal, the respondent or a third party, that, on the balance of probabilities, raises a prima facie case of iniquity on the part of their client, there is in our view a duty on the solicitor to assist the Tribunal in the furtherance of its inherent jurisdiction to ensure that its time and resources are not being abused in furtherance of a fraud
Specific findings
The two responsible solicitors were dealt with separately by the tribunal. Neither was present and their reasons for not attending were found to be ‘disingenuous’. Both ended up being told, in absentia, that they would be subject to Show Cause notices under the tribunal’s Hamid jurisdiction.
No finding was made directly linking the law firm to the fraud. Paragraph 99 of the determination is carefully framed:
We would first make it clear that ZYBA Law deny having any links to Vision Sylhet Consultancy. They also deny using any agents in Bangladesh. The respondent has not sought to cast doubt on those assertions and neither do we. On the limited information available to us, we are unable to make any findings on why so many Bangladeshi nationals relying on similar documents in support of their visit visa applications have decided to use ZYBA Law, seemingly exclusively, to bring their judicial review claims and it would be inappropriate for us to speculate.
The first of the solicitors, Mr Hussain, had refused to co-operate with the tribunal when directed to do so, for example by identifying any other cases in which the documents found to be fraudulent had been used by other clients. No evidence had been presented to suggest that, on being notified of the prima facie evidence of fraud, he had taken ‘reasonable steps to satisfy himself that his firm was not being used by his clients in furtherance of that fraud’.
The tribunal held Mr Hussain:
has not acted in accordance with his duty under rule 2 of the Procedure Rules to assist the Tribunal in furthering the overriding objective and he arguably has acted in breach of his duties as a solicitor to act in a way that upholds the public trust and confidence in the solicitor’s profession, to act with integrity and not to waste the court’s time.
The other solicitor, Mr Tauhid, had acted in a case in which he had asserted in writing in grounds that the case was ‘not one that shares any of the above similarities’. In fact several of the documents found to be fraudulent had been used in the case and Mr Tauhid did not include them with the bundle. His failure to disclose was found to be ‘astonishing’ and his justification for failing to do so found to ‘ring hollow’.
The tribunal was not impressed:
We find these breaches of the duty of candour, and arguably Mr Tauhid’s professional duty to act with integrity, to be significant.
There is little the tribunal or the UK authorities can do about agents in other countries who manufacture documents. Lawyers in the UK who end up instructed in such cases need to be alive to the possibility, though, and cannot turn a blind eye if they encounter obviously suspicious conduct.
Finally, there has been no Hamid hearing as far as we can tell, but the claims for judicial review have formally been refused.